Sajith opens a new avenue with ‘Sara’
Almost three hand half decades ago, young journalist, attached to now defunct newspaper ‘Sun’, left the job to take up music as a full time occupation.
Nobody expected him to lead his band for almost two decades, but he did through storms, ups and downs.
Sajith Muthucumarana, the leader of the band ‘Ecstasy’ has never taken ‘no’ as the answer. Since late eighties his band ‘Ecstasy’ has performed in at all the top venues in Colombo regularly.
Sajith with Ecstasy in 1990
But after almost two decades of music, Sajith thought of getting back to his old job, journalism. But while continuing with journalism, banking and back again with journalism, Sajith looked back and saw something missing in his musical career.
‘I was in journalism in and out of it for about ten years and in the banking sector as well. Most of my life was dedicated for music and I think it counts for almost 20 good years of my life. But when I looked back it didn’t give me the real satisfaction. I was performing at many top venues, my band was at top one time, but all these years we were playing all cover versions. I didn’t work or even given a thought for creating something of my own’ he explained saga of his musical career.
Sajith’s maiden creation ‘Sara’ was release recently on YouTube. The Lyrics were penned by Sajith’s wife, while the melody, music arrangements and of course the vocals were handled by Sajith himself.
‘‘Sara’ was a more recent song that I was working on though it came out before few earlier songs that I had been working on. Much earlier to ‘Sara’, I started on another original last year, ‘Wela Lande’ – again written by my wife – and have completed the recording, but due to some editing issues of the music video, had to hold it back till they are sorted it out. So, all in all I have a few more originals on the pipeline, and am looking forward to releasing one or two songs by the end of this year. The audio versions are almost completed and the visuals of these songs have to be shot’ Sajith said.
Being a western musician, naturally the music Sajith produce are supposed to lean on western music trends/genre. But in this song ‘Sara’, he wanted to mix western and oriental music cultures to bring out a fusion; hence it featured oriental drum sounds along with a sitar, not to mention the ‘raga’, in the interludes.
‘I think that experiment worked well, going by the feedback received. Comments and the number of views ‘Sara’ received on YouTube in a very short period is encouraging’ he added.
‘I started involving myself in music professionally in the early 80s with the forming of the band Ecstasy, which I led/managed till early 2000s. After taking a long break from the scene, the slowing down of the country due to COVID pandemic gave me the chance to listen to three of my old Sinhala songs that I had recorded (found an old CD, which had these songs). This kicked me into action and thought ‘why not?’. This collection had solo songs of mine and two duets with Corrine, one of which I have started re-doing with her, and hoping to put out as soon as possible; Sajith explained.
The video production of ‘Sara’ was handled by veteran videographer Dayal Bandara.
‘Sara’ song can be viewed on YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H9E9xuJQXY)
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